


Valuable Contribution

by smilebackwards



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 09:18:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5411378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter is making a valuable contribution in the Case Progression Unit. Then the magic happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Valuable Contribution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [De_Nugis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/gifts).



Peter was making a valuable contribution in the Case Progression Unit. Or, at least, that was what people told him.

Six days in, Peter had more paper cuts than he’d ever had in his life. After six months, Peter had twenty three perfectly closed case files with beautifully maintained chains of evidence that no hack defense attorney would ever be able to get thrown out in trial and a wpm of 90, which was nothing to sniff at. 

Lesley, on the other hand, had been officially assigned to the Murder Investigation Team, was hip-deep in a triple homicide, and had just gotten a fresh lead on the murderer, which any copper will agree is as good an excuse for cancelling a trip to the pub as can be found. Peter had already ordered chips and a pint when he got the apologetic text so he’d tucked himself into a small corner table and opened a game of Tetris on his phone. He was lamenting the lack of red straight pieces as level seven got the better of him when someone at his elbow cleared their throat.

“May I sit?” asked a man with a silver-topped cane and handmade Italian shoes.

“Be my guest. Peter Grant,” Peter introduced, leaving off the PC. It’s not that he’s ashamed of his unit assignment, it’s just that when you tell people you’re a copper, they expect you to have at least one good thief-taking story or two to tell over a pint, and the most exciting thing Peter did this week was attend an in-service on the dangers of carpal tunnel.

“Thomas Nightingale,” the man said, removing his Burberry coat and hanging it over the back of his chair.

Peter gaped. “Not Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale?”

Nightingale looked at him, puzzled. “Yes, in fact. Have we met?”

One of Peter’s first assignments had been to create a documentation site for something called Falcon. Everyone shook their heads when he’d asked around about what it was, most in puzzlement, but a few in derision. 

“X-Files division,” his boss, Shapiro, had said.

“Really?” Peter asked. That sounded kind of cool.

Shapiro nodded and handed him a featherweight file. “Good luck.”

When Peter opened the file, there were only ten pages in total, all of them on the kind of stiff, vaguely brown paper you’d find in old illuminated manuscripts and covered edge to edge in perfect copperplate.

It took Peter all of three hours to actually type up the two case reports and attach them to the bare bones of a share site locked with the password Harry potteR??. The reason he was still at the precinct at going on eight o’clock, long after everyone had given up on him and left for the pub, was the content. Wizards and goddesses and spells. 

Peter was almost certain someone was playing a practical joke on him, but when he ran a search for Falcon through HOLMES, it had come up in the private notes of not a few cases. (Also in several genuine falcon attack reports, mostly on small dogs, but including one rather interesting one of a trained hunting falcon set on an unfaithful husband.)

Detective Chief Inspector Seawoll’s notes were less than complimentary and had acidly referred to someone called Nightingale who’d been assigned the descriptors posh, beknighted, and goddamn bastard. Peter had followed that apoplectic thread to a blank, photoless personnel file with the notation _refer to Archives._

DCI Thomas Nightingale’s personnel file, tucked away in a metal file cabinet in the sub-basement of the Archives ancillary building beside Hampstead nick, was still on genuine paper—old, crumbling paper at that—and listed his birth year as nineteen oh smudge. Peter figured this either made him a) dead and not the DCI Thomas Nightingale of the current Falcon call sign, b) a vampire, or c) something else weird and magical that Peter really wanted to know about. 

“No,” Peter said, hoping Nightingale ordered the garlic pizza so he could test the validity of option b, “but I’ve seen your name on a few cases. I’m a Constable in the Case Progression Unit.”

The server came over and Nightingale ordered a plate of nachos with a vaguely guilty look on his face. “Case Progression Unit,” he said, when she’d left for the kitchen, “Is that a new division?”

Peter figured if you were actually over a hundred years old, anything that happened in the last five years or so could conceivably be considered new. “Yes, electronic documentation.”

Nightingale looked rather more interested than most people did after Peter explained that his job didn’t directly involve murder investigations. He glanced at Peter’s smartphone, resting face up on the table, like it was something he was aware existed but had never delved further into.

“Are you good with telephones?” Nightingale asked. “Perhaps you could help me with something.”

-

The Falcon nick was a curious blend of old architectural features complete with a life-size marble statue of Isaac Newton and a library that Peter hovered beside hopefully before he followed Nightingale up a staircase that looked straight out of Beauty and the Beast.

Two flights later, Nightingale pushed open the door to a guest room where all the furniture was covered with white drop cloths, save for a small round side table on which sat an old Bakelite phone. Peter couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen one that wasn’t self-consciously retro themed decor.

“A non-corporeal entity has attached itself to the inner workings,” Nightingale said. “Usually an _expello_ forma would be all that’s needed to excise it, but there’s something blocking it. I thought perhaps a technical solution.”

Peter stared at him. “There is _literally_ a ghost in the machine?”

Nightingale frowned. “I suppose if you’d rather put it that way, yes.”

The Bakelite rattled anxiously. It reminded Peter of one of the traps his mother used to put out around the garbage bins for hedgehogs. It sounded like it was in pain. 

“How much do you care about the phone?” Peter asked. The handset was dusty and the rotary dial looked stiff, the cut outs stuck halfway between the numbers, so he was guessing not much.

“Not at all,” Nightingale confirmed.

It wasn’t exactly what Peter had expected when he’d agreed to being somewhat good with telephones, but he figured he probably knew enough about electricity to cause a minor circuit overload without electrocuting himself. Probably.

He stripped the insulation off a section of the wire with his pocketknife. “We’ll need a power source,” Peter said, pulling out the airwave handset he’d nicked from Lesley and removing the 9-volt battery. He touched one end of the phone wire to the negative terminal and the other to the positive and hoped it worked the way it had back in science class.

There was a small but satisfying burst of sparks and the phone rang once, a loud, shrill counterpoint to something that sounded like a sigh of relief and which Peter dearly hoped was the ghost finally shuffling off this mortal coil. 

“That was very effective,” Nightingale said, watching the accompanying puff of smoke curl up to the ceiling.

Peter smiled. “I strive to make a valuable contribution, sir.”

-

In Peter’s experience, blowing up a superior officer’s property wasn’t generally grounds for a commendation. But there it was, in black and white, attached to his personnel file. 

The dinner invitation came on quality cardstock, with Peter’s name on the front in what was practically calligraphy. After staring at Arial 12pt font for the better part of six months, Peter could almost weep from the beauty.

Dinner was steak-and-kidney pudding, served by an old-fashioned maid with an abundance of sharp teeth, and afterwards, Nightingale showed him a genuine goddamn magic spell.

“Can anyone do that?” Peter asked, staring at the ball of yellow light in Nightingale’s hand and trying to quash the rising hope in his chest.

“No,” Nightingale said. “Not everyone. But certainly many people who don’t realize it can perform magic with the benefit of training. I rather think you have the potential.”

 _Fuck me,_ Peter thought, cutting his hand through Nightingale’s werelight and watching it flatten against his palm like the beam of a flashlight. _I can do magic. Maybe._

Nightingale, smiling, asked, “How would you like to find out?”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Valuable Contribution](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13207806) by [sisi_rambles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisi_rambles/pseuds/sisi_rambles)




End file.
